World Economic

SSM St. Joseph Hospital in Kirkwood said Tuesday it is partnering with six area physician practices in a joint venture aimed at improving patient care and satisfaction. The new company will design and test new patient care processes in a pilot nursing unit in the hospital.

Improvements developed in this unit will provide the basis for how patient care is delivered when St. Joseph’s moves to south St. Louis County and becomes St. Clare Health Center in 2009.

"We’ve been on a journey to redesign the patient experience," said Sherry Hausmann, president of St. Joseph’s and the future president of St. Clare. "We’ve designed a building to support it. Now we have to turn to the processes in that building. We have to make sure we work differently."

While the partnership announced Tuesday will cease when St. Joseph’s closes, the agreement allows for another partnership to form at St. Clare. SSM hopes the partnership will serve as a model for hospitals throughout its health care system, Hausmann said.
The practices in the St. Joseph partnership are made up of Baker Medical Group, Cedar Hill Family Medicine, Esse Health, Kirkwood Medical Group, Midwest Medical Associates and SSM Medical Group, and have dozens of physicians participating. Other physician groups could be invited to join any partnership formed at St. Clare, which will be at Highway 141 and Bowles Avenue.

Under the agreement, the physician groups own 75 percent of the new company and the hospital owns 25 percent. The hospital then pays the company to provide management services.

The company’s board has nine seats. Six are occupied by the physician practices and the rest are controlled by the hospital.

The unit is closed, meaning nursing staff from other areas of the hospital will not work in the pilot unit. Staff wanting to work in the unit had to apply for those positions. The unit will focus on improving employee, doctor and patient satisfaction as well as treating patients efficiently and with adherence to best practices. It will also look at how other departments within the hospital interact with the pilot unit.

Physicians will be paid a base salary for time spent managing the unit. Achieving improvement milestones, such as improved patient satisfaction scores, will earn the physicians bonuses. Physicians will also be paid to develop improvement strategies bad credit payday advance. Whether the unit makes or loses money will remain the responsibility of the hospital, thus freeing the physician groups from financial risk.

Providing financial incentives and ownership to the physicians encourages them to buy-in to the process, said Dr. Timothy Pratt, a member of the Kirkwood Medical Group and chairman of the new partnership. "I think when you own something, things are different than when you just use something," Pratt said.

The unit began operations a few weeks ago. The physician groups have already changed some radiology procedures and told one doctor to improve his attitude or take his patients elsewhere.

"We told the doctor to shape up or he wouldn’t have any patients on the floor," Pratt said. "That never happens in a private hospital."

Similar ventures are sprouting up across the country, experts said.

Hospitals and physicians are facing increasing pressure to improve patient care, become more efficient and boost patient satisfaction. As efforts to pay health care providers based on these metrics pick up steam, physicians and hospitals see more value in partnering on improvements.

"The demands for measurable quality have become vastly intensified," said Alice G. Gosfield, a health law attorney based in Philadelphia. "The last three years have seen a major explosion."

Competition for patients is another driver, said Burl Stamp, a health care consultant based in St. Louis.

"Bringing both physicians and the hospital and the staff together to structure and manage those processes is a very effective way to move them forward," Stamp said. "Previously, there were not as many incentives in place to cause a hospital to say, ‘This is how we should be thinking about the world.’"

It’s too early to know whether the partnerships will be successful, but Stamp has hope.

"This brings physicians and hospitals together around a focused unit and a focused group of patients," Stamp said. "Because of that focus my sense is it has a higher probability of success than some of the strategies of 10 to 15 years ago."

mjfeldstein@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8209

Source